Raikkonen: “A shame, we could have been on pole”

Kimi Raikkonen is disappointed after qualifying for the Chinese GP, which he ended in third place. The Ferrari Finn was in the lead after the first runs in Q3 but was unable to improve with the last attempt due to an error at the hairpin and was overtaken by Nico Rosberg and Daniel Ricciardo.

“Even in the previous run in the same corner I had arrived a little too long, and on the last lap it happened again, I simply ended up wide at the hairpin and lost a lot of time” said Raikkonen. "It's a shame, I think we had a chance to be in front today but that's how it went, we'll try to do our best tomorrow."

Asked what he expects from tomorrow's race given that Rosberg will be able to do a much longer first stint considering his best time in Q2 on soft tyres, Raikkonen replied: “I don't know, I'm not making predictions , but obviously I'm very disappointed with what happened in qualifying. Third position isn't bad, it's on the best side of the track, and we can start well from there. We'll see how it goes, I'm sure the circuit won't be in ideal conditions after the rain. We hope to be closer tomorrow than what we saw yesterday. We will try to do our best, we will see whether it will be possible to fight with those in front of us or not."

Sebastian Vettel saved a set of supersofts in Q3 and therefore adopted a different strategy, the Finn explained that he preferred to do a second run: “We had several options, but we don't know which will be the best for tomorrow. We decided to do a second run and it had been a good lap until the hairpin, at the end of the opposite straight, where I almost went off the track. Obviously it wasn't ideal, but that's how it happened,” concluded Raikkonen.